Through the industrial revolution and the information revolution, society is undergoing a hyper-connectivity revolution based on the Internet of Things (IoT), where everything can be connected to the Internet. Currently, things connected to the internet are less than 1% of all objects, but various innovations and business opportunities can be created in the future by using IoT technology.
As an example of ubiquitous IoT services, an internet-connected vehicle may support a service of automatically transmitting an emergency message and an autonomous driving service. In addition, healthcare products that may measure heart rate, the amount of exercise, etc. may support healthcare services. Smart homes services may include remote control services of home appliances or closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring.
IoT technologies may include sensing technologies, wired and wireless communication and network infrastructure technologies, and IoT service interfacing technologies. Such sensing technologies may include remote sensing by use of traditional sensors, such as a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, a thermal sensor, a gas sensor, an illumination sensor, and an ultrasonic sensor; physical sensors that may acquire information from a physical object or surroundings such as a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), radar, a position sensor, a motion sensor, and an image sensor. Physical sensors are advancing to smart sensors that have standard interfaces and information processing capabilities to enhance application properties. Also, physical sensors may have a virtual sensing function of extracting certain information from sensed data and the virtual sensing function that may be implemented within IoT service interfaces. IoT sensing technologies employ a multiple sensor technology that is more advanced than conventional independent sensors and allow extraction of more intelligent and high-dimensional information.
Wired or wireless communication and IoT network infrastructure technologies may include all communication services, apparatuses, and network infrastructures that are used for networking humans, devices, and services regardless of communication protocols and physical layers such as wireless personal area networks (WPAN), Wi-Fi, 3G/4G/LTE, Bluetooth, Ethernet, broadband convergence network (BcN), satellite communication, microware, serial communication, and power line communication.
The IoT service interface enables interfacing of IoT entities such as humans, devices, and services with application services each of which provide a specific function. The IoT service interface is not a simple network interface, but a comprehensive term that provides or facilitates a variety of interfacing operations, for providing services, including: sensing, manipulation, extraction, processing, and storing of information; determination; situation awareness; recognition; security and privacy protection; authentication and authorization; discovery; object formalization; ontology-based semantics, open sensor-API, virtualization, positioning, processor management, open platforms, middleware; data mining; Web Services; and social network services.
Recently, device to device (D2D) communication may be performed by using a Bluetooth technology that is mainly used as a near field network technology, by using the same, uni-directional as well as bi-directional data whereby transmission and reception is available.
Bluetooth technology may replace multiple cable connections which are required between devices with a single wireless connection within a local area. For example, when Bluetooth wireless technology is implemented in a mobile phone and a laptop computer, the mobile phone and the laptop computer may be used without being connected to a cable. All types of digital devices including printers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), desktop computers, fax machines, keyboards, and joysticks may be a part of a Bluetooth system. The Bluetooth wireless technology allows devices to be free from cables and acts as a universal bridge in forming an interface between an existing data network and peripheral devices. This particular group between devices are spaced apart from a fixed network lower structure. Bluetooth has been designed to be operated even in a radio frequency environment with much noise. Therefore, Bluetooth ensures connection using rapid recognition and a frequency hopping method. A Bluetooth module performs new frequency hopping after receiving or sending a packet, thereby avoiding interference with other signals. Compared to other systems which are operated in the same frequency, Bluetooth uses particularly fast and short packets. Meanwhile, with the announcement of Bluetooth 4.0 with features including classic Bluetooth, Bluetooth high speed and Bluetooth low energy, interest in Bluetooth low energy technology is increasing.
In ultra near field communication technology, near field communication (NFC) is well known. When such NFC and RFID technology are used, beacons or iBeacon technology uses a Bluetooth bandwidth of 2.4 GHz.
Such a beacon may provide information customized according to movement of a user since the beacon can accurately identify the position of the user at a short distance. Accordingly, there are many applications in the marketing field.
The beacon technologies use a low powered device using Bluetooth low energy (BLE) that is Bluetooth version 4.0. This technology is also attracting attention.
In a conventional Bluetooth version, there are limitations on power efficiency and a number of devices that can be connected at the same time. In Bluetooth version 4.0, power consumption has been remarkably improved so that use for one year or more is available with a single coin-shaped battery and there is no limit on the number of devices that are connected at the same time. Accordingly, beacon services can become more widely available.
One of the beacon's feature is the ability to recognize ranges from 10 cm to 100 m and is available according to output power, along with the position of an individual that can be accurately identified even indoors with limited space no matter how many people there are. This information is consistent with an individual that may transmit different messages since each device provides different types of information.